Cryptopia Exchange Relaunches Following January Hack

Following a January 2019 hack that cost them millions of dollars, Cryptopia has relaunched on March 19, 2019, With 40 Trading pairs.

The History of the Hack

In January 2019, Cryptopia experienced one of the first crypto exchange hacks of the year which led to the loss of millions of dollars and a second hack that lost over 1,500 ETH tokens. As soon as the hacks took place, the exchange shut down, and an investigation was opened into the matter.

Interestingly enough, some of the stolen funds were found and immediately frozen on other exchanges. For weeks, there was intense speculation as to the future of the exchange, but some hope returned when the exchange announced on March 17, 2019, that it would reopen before the end of March 2019, after it had relaunched in a read-only format on March 5, 2019.

At the time, user balances reflected what they were before the hack and users were told to reset their passwords and enable two-factor authentication. Also, users were told to cancel all their standing orders while the site’s API was still disabled and were warned not to deposit any funds into the exchange for the time being.

Now, the anticipation is over as the exchange has been brought back up in full trading mode, as confirmed by a March 19, 2019 tweet by their official account.

Update: We have resumed trading on 40 trade pairs that we have quantified as secure. We will continue to expand this list as we clear more coins.

— Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) March 19, 2019

Back in Business

“Update: We have resumed trading on 40 trade pairs that we have quantified as secure. We will continue to expand this list as we clear more coins,” the Cryptopia tweet says.

Customers were informed that if their coins were part of the stolen funds, they would begin to see withdrawals for those amounts. In that case, the transaction ID for the withdrawal would not exist on the network but would detail how the funds were impacted, and there would be a subsequent deposit of the Cryptopia Loss Marker (CLM).

More information is expected in the coming days about how disbursement will take place.

Since this news broke, there has, as expected, been a mixed bag of reactions in social media with some being happy at their return and some being hostile.